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When does concept art step over the line into character design?

According to the Wiki page (which I know Wikipedia can be wrong) the definition for Concept art is the following:

Concept art is a form of illustration where the main goal is to convey a visual representation of a design, idea, and/or mood for use in movies, video games, or comic books before it is put into the final product.

The Concept artist definition is the following: An individual who generates visual reference for an object (like weapons, armor and vehicles) or being (like a character or creature) that does not yet exist.

Now to Character Design according to Wikipedia doesn't exist outside of the the "Commercial Character Design" which only focuses on the advertising part of it. . .sooo. . .I guess I'm going to say you guys know what a Character Designer does. However if you absolutely must have a definition:

A Character Designer creates a graphical design based around a characters persona, origins and personal characteristics; keeping in mind the overall stylistic choices of the end product.

A concept artist is more of an illustrator, and a character designer is more of a.. designer.

A concept artist is an illustrator that creates a "style" or "look" of the elements in a movie.

And character designers, typically have more draftsman skills, and experience in animation than the concept artist.. and is someone who can quickly interpret concept art into designs, model sheets for animators to draw off of. (IE turnarounds)

A character designer can also be a concept artist, but concept artists usually have a hard time doing the character design work.

Most productions, The character designer is the concept artist.

Examples of Concept Art:Disney hired this guy... ... Out of work Animators grabbed their chest

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Carrie, from what I saw of your online portfolio, I'd say you are leaning toward concept art more then anything else. Does this Art School in Atlanta have a animation wing? I'm guessing you did all that layout concept & BG work there right?

But if you ask him to turn-around any of those characters or how to make them walk and talk.. where their appendages articulate.. or how to build it in 3D.. he might throw up his hands and shrug.

A character designer makes sense of it all. But you may not want to hang it on your wall.

Maybe this'll help..A concept artist imagined.. drew and painted this..and a character designer would be the guy that does this...and an animator.. cg guy or sculptor can take that information and make this..

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Character design is in feature too, but the animators are doing more of that now. The way I was taught, was you do billions of roughs, blues and vignettes in all kinds of mediums. When the director and the stylist decide on a unified design, then YOU the character designer who can paint as well as draft, clean up the approved designs in the style of the film and then turn the clean up art in to the production designer who compiles the model packet.At least that was Disney Feature in the 90's

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In my opinion, the line between character design and concept art is and should continue to be blurred. I teach a class at Art Center College of Design here in Pasadena, and I FORCE my students to inject emotion, posing and props into their characters, because this is the future of our industry. There's too many cool character designs from that school which are devoid of emotion, and before any grads jump on me, I am an Art Center alumnus.

I pretty much agree on Offbeat's post earlier, but twenty years ago a Ralph McQuarrie painting was concept art and a Glenn Keane pre-production rendering was character design. I merely pose the idea that the future of our business forces all artist to be able to do both.

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oh.. and BTW.. that's like an Ideal situation.. most companies don't differentiate between concept artist and designers.. I've worked on productions where I would just hand over sketches to modelers..

and i've worked on couple productions where the character designer is the concept designer... they just tell them: "...make it look like this.. or that show!"

(In show business, they don't want it to look good.. they want it by Tuesday)

Typically.. animation production will spend a month (less or longer depending on whether its for TV or film and also depends on budget) working with concept artists developing the "look" and "feel" of the show.

Then they take that artwork and give it to designers to make characters, props, and backgrounds based off of that work.

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Offbeat thank you for your answer. I appreciate you trying so valiantly to explain things in as many different ways as possible. Things are a lot more clear now - so thanks.

Jasen: Yes sir, my school does have an animation wing, and I'm part of it - it's just. . .we have a strictly sequential artist as our main 'character and object' design teacher and well he didn't really explain a lot. The majority of my education I gleaned from books and a few core 2D teachers that were available, one of them being ex Disney. I've learned most of my 2D animation skills from her.
IP: Logged

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I work in games and my title is concept artist.I do everything from "illustrations" and moods to blueprints of props and locations as well as character designs and model sheets of approved characters. Etc.In other words; everything that has to be designed - which is... everything.But I think this varies from studio to studio.And in animation it's from my experience very often split up and closer to what Offbeat describes (eventhough concept art should not be illustration).

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I find that most schools don't really teach you what you need to know animation wise. Even the big ones. Although Charles school is pretty good at it. You pretty much have to pick up some of it on your own.

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A production designer, (often broken down into character, prop, location and possibly fx designers)take the concept art or the preproduction art and makes it work for animation. Much concept art is for direction and feel (sorta the visual language of the production) but need to be brought into the realm of the 'animation factory'--so that the design is animatable and can be reproduced on model by many hands and departments. All models are used to pic colours and are used to check model of all the art that follows.

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Where I work, we have some amazing concept artists. Their main job is to come up with the "look and feel". Once that is established, the character designer takes a more "in depth" crack at each character (based on the script).

In my humble opinion, I think there is a distinct difference between a "concept artist" and a "character artist".

- Concept is just what it is. Concepting. A concept artist is usually someone who can draw "anything" very well. They draw objects, places, people, animals, worlds, etc. They can design, color, paint....etc.

- A character artist dives into each character on a different level. He/She unravels the mystery of the characters personality and incorporates that spark in the artwork/design. He/She has to make the character unique and different from anything else out there.He/She is an amazing draftsman who understands how to create a character with emotion that connects and appeals to the audience. He/She can add caricature elements.

I have worked with concept artists that can't grasp the emotion of a character. Although they can draw very well, there is a disconnect to the emotion. Also, many concept artists can't caricature like a character artist can. (iam sure there are some exceptions)